Will You Love Me Tomorrow by the Shirelles was released in 1960 and went to the top of the US charts (No 4 in the UK) early in 1961. It was the first girl group No 1, and one of the first hits by black artists to sell in millions to white kids. And it was almost the perfect pop song. I was 14 when it came out, and Shirley Owens's voice, so powerful yet fragile, so full of yearning, perfectly matched my adolescent moods. In those less permissive days – Lady Chatterley had only just become legal in Britain – we didn't realise the song was about a young girl on the brink of surrendering her virginity (implied by the last two lines of the lyric, "So tell me now, and I won't ask again, will you still love me tomorrow?"), though several US radio stations spotted that right away, and banned it.

The Shirelles had several other hits, including Mama Said, Soldier Boy, Baby It's You, and Dedicated to the One I Love. But nothing conveyed the same sad, plangent raw emotion as Will You Love Me … The others were pop songs, and great ones, whereas their first hit was, in its own small way, a sort of teenage novella. Now, as an older parent myself, I can hear it or hum that soaring yet hesitant melody, and my first thought is: "God, I hope she didn't get pregnant."